Once again the giving season has descended upon us like a Harpie from the seventh circle of hell. If you are reading this we will assume that you have some sort of interest or career in information technology so you need to be prepared to give appropriate geek gifts. Geeks who distribute lame or uncool tech gifts will be banned to a fate far worse than the seventh circle.

The Basic Rules

First some ground rules. Rule #1: Never select a tech present that you would not want to use (or be seen using) yourself. That means that you can't give your nephews those 17 inch, 10 pound, 2 GB, first generation AMD laptops that are on sale at you know where for $199. There is a reason they are cheaper than a decent smart phone. You can also get a good deal on day old bread at the bakery if you don't mind a little mold.

Which provides a lovely segue into Rule # 2: You get what you pay for. There are lots of sad, old android tablets and smart phones that can be had for a song. Please resist that urge. If you are too cheap to buy something worthwhile spend your money on a gift card. That way the recipient will know just how much value you place on their friendship.

Rule # 3: Make your selection appropriate to the recipient. Your aging grandmother probably doesn't want to try and figure out the Windows 8 desktop on a Surface. My 86-yearold father is still wondering where Outlook Express disappeared to when the neighborhood self-proclaimed technical guru offered to upgrade him to Windows 7. And the guru only charged him $100 for the labor.

The next thing we need to consider is the target audience or recipient of the gift. There are two broad categories to consider, friends and family, and professional acquaintances. I see absolutely no need to gift anyone that I would not know were I a tugboat captain. Simply working with someone or engaging their professional services or having your professional services engaged does not make for a gift-worthy situation. I get paid for what I do and so do you so let's leave it there. Anything else is less than ethical. If you really want to give me something, give me a nice recommendation on Linked-in (and don't expect me to return the favor).

So that leaves us with family and friends – and an introduction to our next categories—computers and gadgets.

Computers

We have finally gotten past that awkward time where PC's and laptops were boring commodity devices distinguished only by capacities and processors. We are now in an era where really fun and interesting machines are available for not all that much money.

Tablets

I call traditional tablets those devices where the touchscreen is the primary input device. Apple continues to dominate this market although that dominance will soon diminish. Not because they don't make amazing well-designed and functioning products, but because there are simply too many less-expensive competitors. iPads have led the way for all to follow. That being said I didn't really get the hype on the Retina Display on the latest iPad. I love the display on my iMac and MacBook and when it's time to upgrade my iPad I am sure I will love Rentina, but I really didn't feel the need for that investment. Although I'm sure I will one day wonder how I ever did without it.

The iPad mini is a different story—and a different market. The mini is a fully functioning iPad – just smaller and a lot lighter. It feels like you are holding an envelope instead of a heavy magazine. The iPad mini bridges the gap we had between full-sized iPads and the lesser machines like the first generation Amazon Kindle Fire. There was no comparison for those devices beyond the fact that both used touch screens. It always seems to me that when a parent purchased their child a Fire while they were using an iPad they were sending a message: “You are not worthy of what I have.”

The iPad mini provides a way to change that message. Their size alone makes them totally child/teen friendly. Plus they are great at the things a kid uses a tablet for: games, music, video, email, and social. They are a little small for web browsing and they have no useful role in the business world—unless you are already lugging around a Galaxy Note smartphone. The mini market is just home and family use. Don't be a Scrooge; get the 16GB model. Kids need lots of memory for music and videos.

There are other good tablets on the market. I would recommend the Kindle Paperwhite, a great reader that does not rely on ambient lighting; the Kindle Fire HD, great for video. If you are looking for an Android competitor to the mini you won't go wrong with Google Nexus 7—very iPad-like without all the apps.

MacBook Air

Ultrabooks are here to stay. The rest of the world finally realized that the MacBook Air was not going to go away so rather than wage the battle of innovation they joined the club. Ultrabooks are thin, lightweight, extremely portable devices with solid-state drives and great battery life. Oh yea – Intel is trying to register the name as a trademark. Good luck with that. None of the machines on the market are anywhere near as good as a MacBook Air, which would make a perfect gift for your significant other (probably still a little pricey for a kid).

Surface

The Microsoft Surface is probably the most revolutionary computer on the market this year. A cross between the pure tablet and an ultrabook it is a touch screen devices with a solid-state drive and a keyboard built into its cover/stand. It runs Windows 8, which is optimized for touch screens. They are relatively inexpensive (starting around $500) and rate very high on the cool factor. The big challenge with the Surface right now is that they haven't been around long enough to gain real user acceptance, nor is it certain just where the Surface niche will land. Are they capable of being used as fulltime business machines? Will the release of the Surface Professional close that gap?

In the current business environment Windows 8 is not perceived as ready for prime time. Many large organizations are still completing the move from XP to Windows 7 and are hardly ready to embrace another, radically different, operating system. The Surface has to cross that Rubicon as well as getting users acclimated to a device where sometimes you touch the screen and sometimes you use your keyboard. I have been using keyboards with iPads for a couple of years and that now you touch, now you type thing is very hard to get used to.

A lot of Microsoft employees I work with use Surface machines and they all seem to say the same thing: “I miss the start menu.” (Which they then immediately follow up with a disclaimer saying that they really don't need it.) Not a bad thing, that—paradigm shifts always take a little while to gain acceptance.

I was at a Microsoft conference last month. During the keynote we were being shown a very nice live product demonstration from a data center 5000 miles away. Very cool stuff. Then a marketing VP swiped the icons right off the face of the Surface he was using for the demo. He stood speechless, staring in amazement at the blank, black screen he had created and which he was sharing with us all. It was one of those moments when you understand why geeks and not marketing managers should do product demos.

Bottom line on the Surface is yes I want one. Yes they are cool. Fast, light, and super-portable. But I haven't wanted one enough to pay for one myself. And that makes me wonder if I really want to spend that much money on a gift computer that could end up in the Betamax closet. Early adopters aren't always the eventual winners. I think I will wait for version two.

Google Chromebook

The logical successor to the netbook, these are lightweight computers designed as thin client devices. They have small (16 GB) solid-state drives so applications and storage need to be cloud based (my iPad has a 64 GB drive). Using SSD technology they are touted as instant on (a few seconds). They are a good fit for Google's cloud-based application suites and tools but are bookends without Wi-Fi or Cellular connectivity. The cheapest Chromebooks are nothing more than netbooks with spinning platter hard drives. I would not bother purchasing a Chromebook without a SSD. Price for the Samsung version is $250. I would rate these as interesting but not compelling. They might be a good gift for a college student who is guaranteed of Wi-Fi across the campus and who just needs something for taking notes, lightweight composition, email and social—and who will get a real computer when they graduate.

Gadgets

The perfect gift for the road warrior is a portable wireless router. I have been toting around a “small” wireless router for years. I have way too many devices to use a single wired connection. So I plug in my little brick and hook it up to my wireless router and get everything connected. The good news is that there are now devices available specifically designed for travel that don't require an external power adapter. The Apple Airport Express is a favorite, but is pricey (about $100) and it does not have an Ethernet port and requires an electric outlet. CNet has an inexpensive wireless router that can be powered and charged from any USB power port. TRENDnet has a nice, low-priced 300 Mbps travel router.

I would probably select the Apple Airport Express but that's just me. I recently added an Airport Extreme wireless modem to my home networks. I don't have a large house but have needed to maintain 3 wireless networks to keep everyone connected with adequate bandwidth. The AE was expensive (about $200) but outperforms every other wireless router I have used—and I have gone through a bunch of them.

Headphones

Last year I dismissed over-the-ear headphones as being as being old fashioned and silly. In-ear devices provide great sound for less money and more convenience. I stand corrected. The boring—been there, done that—noise cancelling headphones have been replaced with hip, cool over the ear devices. If you have a pre-teen through young adult on your gift list you can't go wrong with Beats by Dr. Dre. They are not the most advanced acoustically, nor are they the best design, but sometimes cool outweighs performance. The 1964 Pontiac GTO wasn't the fastest or best handling car on the market but it was the coolest for that one summer. The Beats Solo goes for about $200 and will definitely make you the favorite (and hippest) aunt or uncle on Christmas morning.

While on the subject of headphones I need to once again address the Bluetooth phone headsets. You know what I mean – those silly things that hook over one ear and allow you to talk on your phone almost hands free. I understand that they are very useful in a car and may save your life while driving. But friends don't let friends wear them. I see them lurching around every day—middle-aged men in mommy jeans and plaid shirts with that idiotic thing hanging off their ear. They look like the mob from Night of the Living Dead. Lose the Bluetooth.

Neither

One of the best geek gifts you can give relatives is a year of free tech support. You are probably doing it anyway so you might as well get credit for it. For Christmas set up their computers with some type of software so that you can remotely access their computer and fix whatever they have broken. I have used a bunch of different remote desktop and VNC products over the years but this year switched to one called Splashtop Remote. It has a small client installed on the remote machine that runs on start up and as long as the machine is connected to the Internet it allows me to remote onto that computer and do whatever I need to. It was ridiculously inexpensive and I am able to connect from my iPad or MacBook. My only problem was I set it up out of the goodness of my soul and got no gift credit for it. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Once last thing

Gift certificates really are wonderful presents for the young people on your list. They have a better sense of style and cool than you do anyway. Just don't cheap out.

Special Reports /

Geek Gift Guide &ndash; 2012

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Geek Gift Guide – 2012